Retro Diary – 27/5/12 – "We’re going to play MSR in a whole new time zone!"

Sunday, May 27th, 2012

Dear Diary,

I decided that instead of writing the entire thing on the Sunday, I’d write it as it happens, so some of the stuff may be in present tense, probably not, but just a warning…

Friday 25th March 2012

For a while, I’ve always wanted to try out FIFA Manager 12, because I already had FIFA 12 and UEFA Euro 2012 (Both physical copies!), and it seemed as though if I had manager, that would be the PC collection complete!

So after looking a bit on Origin, I found there was a downloadable demo available, as well as Sims 3 and pets, so I downloaded them, and gave them a go.

I surprisingly enjoyed FIFA Manager, I previously tried the Football Manager 2012 demo, and I found that boring, this was pretty fun, though, even if it’s pretty glitchy…

I really enjoyed Sims 3 and pets as well, the Sims 3 “Teaser”, as they call it basically give you a minute trial of an area and you move to the next, you get to go to 3 areas, the pets demo is basically just the create part, nothing else. Although now I’m considering getting both games, but I can’t, as I’m saving up to pre-order FIFA 13 and PES 2013 on both PC and PS2…

Saturday 26th May 2012

My sister came into my room while she was visiting, and she asked if she wanted to play Tony Hawk’s Underground for the PS2, so I let her, and she was playing for about 10-15 minutes, even though she wasn’t doing any tricks, and was hardly jumping, she seemed to be enjoying it for a while.

Sunday 27th March 2012

This morning, since I recently got a new ISP (O2, we used to have AOL), I thought I’d try FIFA 12 and PES 2012 online, before hand, it just didn’t work at all, I was lucky to play half a match on either, but with the new ISP, I played several full matches without a problem!

I won my match on FIFA 4-2, we were both Barcelona. On PES 2012, however, the people there are complete ninjas! The first match, I lost 8-2! Not only that, my 2 goals, were my only shots in the whole game, the other guy had, I kid you not, 22 shots! Another Barcelona, Chelsea moment… The second match I played was even worse, I lost 13-2! I would’ve rage quit, but if I did, the game would restrict my account, it’s nice to know that system works…

It was PS3 week at grans today, we only played FIFA Street, me and my brother, played 2 matches of “Last man standing”, which, if you score, the player that scored gets sent off, and player who send their entire team off first wins, he won both times.

The me and my cousin, Giancarlo, played a 5-a-side match, which I won 6-2 I think. Then me and my other cousin, Steven, had a game, I don’t remember the result for that.

After that, I left.

Steven came up to our house not long afterwards, and we played a bunch of games!

We decided to try a challenge, and attempt to play all of the consoles that night, we just called it: The Console Challenge, it’s good enough, plus it has alliteration.

We started off by playing FIFA 12, in celebration that FIFA 13 was coming to PS2, widescreen and in 60Hz! I went as Barcelona, and he went as Athletico Madrid. We enjoyed it, despite the game being completely different, but not for the better, and the game kept slowing down, we played a match, I won, but I don’t remember by how much.

We then played PES 2012 for the PS2, in celebration of PES 2013 coming to PS2, I went Barcelona again and I think Steven went as Manchester City ,more of the same here, except the game had no widescreen mode, not that it’s that important.

Then we played Timsplitters, and trying to figure out what to do! If you don’t know what we mean, the game’s objectives are very simple, literally, every objective is take something, bring it back, me and Steven have an in-joke of pretending that we don’t understand the objective! We couldn’t pass the level we were on, because we had no idea where the item in question was and there were too many guys pumping lead into us.

Then we went up a step, and played Timsplitters 2! We were on Neo Tokyo, where you had to follow someone without her noticing you, we finally passed it!

Then we played Vib Ribbon on the PS1, I challenged him to complete a ‘Weird’ Al Yankovic song on it, as I mentioned to him it was almost impossible, he couldn’t do it!

Then we played the revolutionary Rise of the Robots for the Amiga CD32! We played a couple of matches, He won the first, I won the second.

Then we played Sonic Adventure 2, we played a Kart Race, I don’t remember my position, but Steven came last. Then we played a couple of action stages, I won both, which was enough to show him the levels we never played in before.

Then we played Metropolis Street Racer, we set the time to the console default (midnight 1st Jan 1998), but we set the time zone to a random one to mix things up, and it landed on GMT +9, then Steven said “…and now, we’re going to play MSR in a whole new time zone!” Brilliant! At that moment, I knew I was goign to use that for this diary’s title.

We played a couple of races, both of which I won, the first one, which was in Tokyo, by quite a margin, 20 seconds between my finish, and Steven’s, the second one, which was in London, was close, but it was still clear who won.

Then we played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 on the Xbox, so we could get our Horse of the week, we played in the airport level, where it all started! The “horse”, was wVjlYSfRR4! I won it despite my handicap! 11-5 to me!

Then we played Mashed: Fully Loaded on the Xbox, we played f*ck knows how many matches, we got addicted for a short while! We had force ourselves out to play something else!

Then we moved onto the Saturn to play Sega Rally Championship we had a race, unfortunately, I won the race…

Then we had a game of FIFA 97, also on the Saturn, and it was awful, but in the awesome kind of way! We soon realised why the Sega Worldwide Soccer games got so much praise back in the day and still to this day has a fan base… this was the alternative!

Then we played Forsaken on the N64, the game is fun on single player, not so much on multiplayer, pretty disappointing, especially since the N64 is the system for multiplayer games!

Then we played 007 Goldeneye, on, what else, the Sega Saturn! Oh wait… We played a game of licensed to kill slappers only, as always, but we had turbo mode on, which, as you might have guessed, speeds up the players, and it was a lot of fun, I expected it to be frustrating, because you might not be able to hit the players, that was the case, but it was still fun! Then, for the first time in a long time, we had a proper gun match, with turbo mode on, but still, and we had an absolute blast! We should do this more often!

Finally, because all we needed was the Gamecube to have completed all the main consoles I have, we played Beyblade V-Force: Super Tournament Battle, once I finally explained to Steven how to launch the Beyblade in the game, once that was over and done with, we played a proper match, and we enjoyed it, well, at least I did.

We were about to play Sonic Heroes on the Gamecube, but Steven had to leave unfortunately, so we weren’t able to, obviously.

Before we left, I showed him my recently acquired key chain Beyblade and launched it, and asked him “Doesn’t this bring back memories?”, he said “Aye, it does.”, just thought I’d tell you that.

Here’s what we played:

In the order we played them:

FIFA 12 [PS2]

Pro Evolution Soccer 2012 [PS2]

Timesplitters [PS2]

Timesplitters 2 [PS2]

Vib Ribbon [PS1]

Rise of the Robots [CD32]

Sonic Adventure 2 [DC]

Metropolis Street Racer [DC]

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 [Xbox]

Mashed: Fully Loaded [Xbox]

Sega Rally Championship [SS]

FIFA 97 [SS]

Forsaken [N64]

007 Goldeneye [N64]

Beyblade V-Force: Super Tournament Battle [GC]

It was a fun week overall, next Sunday, we’re having party for my brother’s communion at my house, and all of my cousins are going, it’s going to be a frantic week!

The week afterwards will be Wii week, because it’s been far too long since we played a game of Wario Ware Smooth Moves!